Catching Fire Was Never the Question
by Drag0nst0rm
Summary: In this war, there's no need for enlistment papers. They were drafted from the moment they were born. (Or: Bucky and Steve live through the Dark Days of Panem. It's surprising how little things change. Hunger Games fusion.)


One of Bucky's earliest memories was of his father coughing up coal dust and his mother cursing the Capital's taxes that forced them to work so long in the mines.

His other earliest memory was of a skin and bones kid coughing that exact same way. He was the first non-miner he'd heard cough like that.

Steve didn't let that stop him from fighting anyone who needed fighting, though, and Bucky decided he liked the kid.

* * *

Bucky's father died from the coal dust. Bucky sat beside Steve as the kid hacked up his lungs all winter and knew Steve would go the same way.

He decided that those coughs were the worst sound in the world.

* * *

Steve - half starved, chronically ill Steve - never backed down from a fight.

Even with a Peacekeeper.

Bucky didn't get there until it was already over and Steve was beaten into the street.

"I won," Steve told him smugly.

Bucky snorted as he helped Steve to his feet. "I'd hate to see what the other guy looks like."

Steve shook his head. "The girl got away," he explained, the only victory that mattered to him.

He couldn't argue with that, exactly, but - "Couldn't you have gotten a Peacekeeper?" They might as well earn their exorbitant pay.

"He _was_ a Peacekeeper."

Steve had his stubborn look on. Bucky sighed and dragged him home.

He heard the national anthem on the television that night. He'd never heard a sound he'd hated more.

* * *

When the District rebelled, of course they did too. Bucky sort of wished the people in charge of handing out weapons had thought twice about giving one to Steve, but then, if they had, Steve probably would have fought bare handed, so this might be for the best.

And it all went well enough at first, aside from Steve's cough getting worse and worse, right up until District 13 showed up with their fancy tech.

He approved of them trying to cure Steve. He did not approve of them testing out their new super soldier serum on him.

It worked, at least, and he wouldn't miss the cough.

But the sound of Steve's screams was all he could think about when he saw the scientists involved.

* * *

The Capital blew up the research facility with Dr. Erskine still inside.

The research building that was also a hospital.

Suddenly Steve wasn't the first of many, he was the only remaining piece of data, so Bucky signed them up for the first mission far, far away from the scientists of District 13.

They ended up with a ragtag bunch from all over Panem, including Jim Morita, who was either Capital born or _really_ dedicated to his fake accent. They called themselves the Howlers, after a bad breed of mutts they won a fight against, and they screamed like banshees as they sabotaged the Capital's supply lines.

He and Steve fit right in, and the band's protectiveness soothed the sound of warning bells in Bucky's head.

* * *

The mission was to blow up some train tracks.

The mission failed.

He fell and the whispered rumble of the train was the last sound he heard.

* * *

They tried to hijack him. It was hard for them, though, because they knew nothing about him that the coal still buried in his skin didn't reveal.

With enough venom in his veins, it didn't matter.

The sound of his screams as they tested out their own version of the serum was all he heard.

* * *

(He didn't hear about the hovercraft Steve crashed to save District 13. He didn't hear about the end of the rebellion. He didn't hear about the start of the Games.

He didn't hear much of anything now, just the hiss of the ice as he was let out to go on a rampage.)

* * *

(He didn't hear that District 13 found Steve, or that he woke up. He didn't hear the new rumblings of rebellion some seventy years after the first.

Just the hiss of the ice. Until - )

* * *

"Bucky?"

* * *

That was his name. He knew his name. But it was suspicious that a stranger knew it.

Everything was suspicious when your brain kept insisting that the whole world was trying to kill you.

(Except - not a stranger.)

There was smoke in the air, so much smoke, and the blond man -

(Steve.)

\- coughed.

He knew that sound.

(He hated that sound.)

Hated that man - No. Just that sound. He hated other sounds too, like the ice, and the anthem, and the sound of this man's screams.

The man was a threat. He had to kill him.

(Had to protect him.)

But he hated that sound.

So he ran.

* * *

They'd pumped him full of drugs until he was more or less a super soldier, so without constant injections of tracker jacket venom, his mind started piecing itself together.

He didn't trust strangers, animals, rebels, or the Capital.

And everyone in this strange world was a stranger.

Except Steve. He trusted Steve. So he went and found him.

"I need - help," he admitted.

"Anything," Steve promised. "I'm with you till the end of the line, pal."

(A train rumbled on, uninterrupted. On an endless circuit, on and on.)

Despite the memory, he decided he liked the sound of that.

* * *

 **A/N: For prompt number twenty-one, "Brothers."**


End file.
